Biz Break: Apple to phase out Aperture, iPhoto in favor of new Photo app

Today: Apple reveals it will stop development on its professional photo editing app, Aperture, and its popular consumer photo app, iPhoto, with the release of OS X Yosemite, and will combine best of both into Photo. Also, GoPro keeps soaring, and a busy day for HP attorneys.

The lead: Put a lens cap over Apple's Aperture

Apple revealed Friday that it will end development of its professional photo-editing app, Aperture, when OS X Yosemite is released later this year.

The popular consumer-focused iPhotos desktop app will also be going away. They'll both be replaced by a single app, dubbed simply Photos, which was first announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month and will hit store shelves in early 2015. Cupertino-based Apple said Photos will incorporate many of Aperture's advanced editing features, and photos from both Aperture and iPhoto will be migrated to the new app.

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"With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere, there will be no new development of Aperture," Apple said in a statement to The Loop blog, which first reported the story. "When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS."

Apple will provide compatability updates for Aperture on Yosemite, but further development will cease by the end of the year, TechCrunch reported. The last major update to Aperture came in 2010.

The news came as a surprise to many, and dismayed fans of Aperture, which was released in 2005 as a challenge to Adobe's popular and powerful Photoshop. "This is really a sad day. Apple really has time and time again abandoned the Pro customer, who supported Apple thru the hard dark days of past," user "Mac Carlos" said in an Apple forum.

Adobe was quick to seize the opportunity to lure more customers to its photo apps. "We're doubling down on our investments in Lightroom and the new Creative Cloud Photography plan," the San Jose software company said in a blog post, "and are committed to helping interested iPhoto and Aperture customers migrate to our rich solution across desktop, device and web workflows."

In other Apple news, Walmart slashed prices for the latest iPhones on Friday. The price for an iPhone 5C fell from $49 to $29, and iPhone 5S prices dropped from $149 to $99. Both require two-year contracts with Sprint, Verizon or AT&T. The price-slashing is seen by experts as an attempt to clear inventory during a typically slow phone-selling season, as many consumers are putting off buying a new phone until the iPhone 6 is expected to be released this fall. Morningstar equity analyst Brian Colello told ABC News the low prices make it unlikely that Walmart is even making a profit off the sales.

SV150 market update: GoPro continues fast out of the gate

Markets rallied late in the day Friday to end in positive territory. Gains were led once again by tech stocks, and Silicon Valley's newest public company, GoPro, continued its post-IPO pop. The San Mateo camera company rose 14.6 percent Friday, or $4.58, to $35.92, a day after surging more than 30 percent in its public debut. Shares hit as high as $40.47 Friday before settling down late in the day.

Hewlett-Packard shares swung up and down all day before closing exactly where they began, at $33.91, following reports it was close to settling lawsuits over its ill-fated $11.1 billion Autonomy purchase in 2011. Reuters reported shareholders have agreed to drop all claims against HP and its leadership, and will team up with company lawyers and shift their fury -- and case -- against Autonomy, which allegedly misled HP about its finances. Earlier Friday, HP also won dismissal of a lawsuit against it claiming the company misled shareholders over alleged ethics lapses by former CEO Mark Hurd.

And the widely watched Standard & Poor's 500 index: Up 3.74, or 0.19 percent, to 1,960.96

Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Follow Mike Murphy on Twitter at twitter.com/mmmmurf.